


They're All Child Soldiers

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds [31]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Child Soldiers, Dimension Travel, Family, Fatherhood, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Master of Death Harry Potter, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 10:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16239689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: On a day that never happened, Sirius Black falls through the veil of death and onto Ichiraku's ramen stand in Konoha, there he meets what could have been his goddaughter in a world he'd never want Harry to live in.





	They're All Child Soldiers

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory note that this is NOT CANON

Tobirama was having the strangest feeling of déja vû. Well, perhaps strange was a bit of an exaggeration, given the circumstances he knew exactly why he was now indulging in memories of only a few years back.

 

Once again Senju Tobirama was sitting behind a one-way mirror in the depths of T&I, once again there was a tall, dark-haired, untrusted Englishman covered in chakra suppression seals and tied to a chair on the opposite side. This time though, Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and the departed Mito had been replaced by a gaggle of English speaking chunins and Hashirama, the only fluent English speakers inside the village.

 

The strangeness of it came into the fact that somehow, in some way he simply did not understand, he’d ended up in this damned situation all over again especially when he was still dealing with the last Englishman.

 

This one, however, had an even more mysterious origin than the last. The English shinobi at least had the decency to have been lurking out of sight in a seal on Lee’s forehead, this one just fell out of the sky and crashed straight into Konoha’s beloved ramen stand (something Uzumaki Kushina seemed adamant to hold against him).

 

And Tobirama truly meant fell out of the sky. One moment it’d been a clear summer day, the next a man was falling out of a black-hole of chakra, which promptly and neatly closed itself up behind him leaving Tobirama and the rest of R&D virtually nothing to work with.

 

“You know,” the head of T&I said with a rather annoyed sigh, as if this was somehow their fault, “If we get even one more of these guys I think it’s worth giving one of you a formal crash course in interrogation.”

 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tobirama said rather drily, not bothering to say that he found that possibility highly unlikely, but then he’d found the idea of another mysterious Englishman highly unlikely as well, “Though you could learn _English_ yourself and save us the trouble.”

 

The man scoffed, likely thinking that no one had time for that, which Tobirama supposed was fair enough even if that kind of attitude did irk him. Still, until there was a true, formal, need it was unlikely that anyone but the crypt division and research would bother with something as bizarre and time consuming as a foreign language.

 

“Did you manage to get anything from him?” Minato asked, watching as the present Yamanaka gave a sort of half-hearted shrug.

 

“He’s… not as bad as the last one. I could get in, and I don’t believe he means us harm. I don’t think he even has any idea where he even is, but he’s… Not all there,” the Yamanaka finally finished.

 

“Not all there?” this was Uzumaki, leaning forward and glancing at the mirror to give the guy on the other side, who looked haggard but sane enough, another look.

 

“He has difficulty focusing, his mind often looping back on memories he’d rather dwell on and memories he clearly wouldn’t. There’re constant flashes of very strong, sometimes conflicting, emotions… The usual sort of symptoms you see from someone who has had a particularly unpleasant time in the war,” Yamanaka spared the man a wry glance, “Of course, all of these things make mind walking and extracting useful information rather difficult.”

 

Which, of course, had led them to bringing in the only English language experts in the village who had already graduated from the academy.

 

“Well, Lee, does he at least look familiar?” Hashirama asked, glancing over at Lee.

 

Lee grimaced, looked across at the man who was still looking worse for wear, hunting for some sign of recognition in those gaunt features.

 

Tobirama would have blamed falling out of nothing, as that surely would have some kind of massive drain on anyone even with the use of fuinjutsu, but his chakra had that edge of perpetual exhaustion that came from years of hemorrhaging chakra. It was not the kind of frayed edges you’d expect from someone who had only just done something truly noteworthy. Either the man was a fool who had constantly pushed past his limit or else had been in the hands of those who wanted to see just how far he could go before he would break time and again.

 

Given what Yamanaka had said… Well, it could be the former or the latter, depending on how truly desperate this man had been during battle.

 

“Well, I don’t remember him from the Dursleys,” Lee finally said with a hapless shrug, “But I did live in a cupboard, so I can’t say I got out much.”

 

And yet somehow, in some impossible way, Tobirama was almost certain that Eru Lee was somehow responsible for this latest fluctuation in reality that had it raining men.

 

Tobirama sighed, stood, and supposed that since they didn’t have to rely on chunin or genin then he was going to go draw the short straw. Looking down towards Minato, Lee, Kushina, and Hashirama he said only, “Take notes.”

 

Then he walked towards the doorway and into the room.

 

The man didn’t look quite like his imprisoned countryman. True, they were both quite fair and dark haired, but this man’s face (while still clearly handsome) had more of a rogue’s charm to it than the aristocratic fine features of Ren. The true differences though, lay in how they held themselves.

 

Ren, Tobirama had come to learn, was a snake, he would wait and bide his time lying low in the weeds before he thought to strike. He was much like a shinobi that way, always gathering information, storing it away for later use even if that use would not come for years upon years. His rage, his fear, his panic, his concerns he would hide beneath a pleasant veneer that was all but imperceptible.

 

This man’s fear, anger, pride, and indignation, on the other hand, was written all over his face. So too were the hardships of his life, the sheer exhaustion that Ren would have hidden under all circumstances, were practically written into the very clothes this man wore.

 

Whoever this was, in other words, was a very different beast.

 

“ _Who the hell are you supposed to be?_ ”

 

And yet a similar accent, or as close to a similar accent that Tobirama could tell, Lee being the native speaker was a bit more practiced at being able to tell this sort of thing compared to him.

 

Tobirama gave the man a rather knowing, amused, look, wondering if the man really thought that was going to work. It was almost an Uzumaki thing to say, or at least, Uzumaki in the vein of Uzumaki Kushina.

 

Tobirama sat in the seat across from the man silently, allowing himself another moment to look him over, to take in the growing beard and bags under his eyes, the appearance that made him look as if he’d been at Konoha’s tender mercy for months rather than a few hours.

 

Finally, Tobirama decided that the best way to deal with an Uzumaki was to be an Uzumaki, “ _That’s my line._ ”

 

The man blinked, opened his mouth, closed it, and listened as Tobirama expanded, “ _At 0800, local time this morning, you appeared out of thin air and crashed into the Village Hidden in the Leaves and were promptly arrested for illegally entering the village._ ”

 

The man’s eyes bugged out of his skull, he opened his mouth, closed it again, and then said, “ _Wait a second, the village of what? I…_ ”

 

Tobirama however paid him no mind, simply continued, “ _Naturally, we’ve had gate crashers in the past. However, they usually aren’t half so clever or half so successful. As you can imagine, we’re quite curious as to how you managed it and why you’ve come._ ”

 

The man shifted, likely trying to hold up his hands in defense, and then seemed to remember that he was handcuffed to the chair. He closed his mouth, opened it again, and let out a rather raw chuckle, “ _Hold it, hold it, I think we have some kind of misunderstanding. I mean…_ ”

 

Here he paused, glanced over at the mirror then back to Tobirama, “ _I mean, you know who I am, right?_ ”

 

Well, now that screamed déjà vû as well, didn’t it? The English shinobi had been quite flummoxed, even insulted, that Konoha shinobi had had absolutely no idea who he was and why they should care.

 

The man’s face fell as if he just realized something, he leaned back in his chair, “ _Wait a minute, they weren’t speaking English earlier… You aren’t English._ ”

 

Tobirama felt his eyebrows raise, almost unwillingly, as he wondered if this man really was this slow or else shaken enough to seem this slow, “ _No, I am not English._ ”

 

The man however barely seemed to hear him, instead was looking rather dazed, as if thinking deeply on some other topic. His brow furrowed making him look much older than he should, likely much older than he truly was, and then his mouth formed an ‘o’ of realization, “ _… I went through the veil._ ”

 

He looked up at Tobirama now in confusion as well as dawning horror, “ _I went through the veil and I… This isn’t England, is it?_ ”

 

“ _No,_ ” Tobirama repeated for the man’s benefit, “ _I am afraid this is not England._ ”

 

The man at first tried to smile, a pained, stretched, grin that didn’t fit on his gaunt features. However, this soon turned into a grimace and then a wretched sob as he pitched forward, hunched over the interrogation table as he wheezed and sobbed in despair.

 

Another, strange, difference between this man and the other, Tobirama couldn’t help but think in pity. Ren had never seemed to lose faith, even after all these years, that he would see his homeland again. This man had given up before he’d even begun.

 

* * *

 

“You’re pawning him off on us?!”

 

Lee was not impressed. First, the bastard had had the gall to land on Ichiraku’s, putting the restaurant out of commission for several weeks. Second, he apparently was going to be crashing Lee and Minato’s apartment as soon as he was vetted through T&I, which according to T&I was going to be done relatively quickly.

 

Minato had only just gotten back from his latest trip with Jiraiya as well, which meant that he’d be on the road again in maybe a week or so, which meant Lee was going to be stuck with this bastard and why was she the only one who thought this was a bad idea?

 

“He’s your godfather,” Tobirama said, not even glancing at her as he walked out of T&I and into the sunlight, turning towards the Senju compound as if this really wasn’t his problem at all.

 

Lee moved faster to keep pace with him, ignoring the fact that Minato was trailing behind apparently already resigned to their babysitting fate, “He did not say that, he said that he’s Potter Harry’s godfather.”

 

Whoever the hell that even was supposed to be. As far as Lee knew she had never had a secret brother or even a secret cousin on her father’s side, there’d only ever been an Ellie Potter.

 

“And Potter Harry’s circumstances sound remarkably like Potter Eleanor’s,” Tobirama said with an odd biting note of sarcasm that he usually didn’t bother to indulge in. Tobirama preferred dry and witty remarks, and generally considered your straight up sarcasm in poor taste.

 

Not that he was wrong though, once he’d gotten going Black Sirius had been a whole well of information, in fact they hadn’t gotten the bastard to shut up. Which now meant that Lee knew far more about England and, possibly, her own life and heritage than she’d ever wanted to.

 

Black Sirius was one of those poor unfortunate souls who got in over his head far too early. He was once the clan heir to the prestigious, English, Black clan and had gone to the English academy (which really was named Hog Warts after all) with Lee’s honorable father, Potter James, and her honorable mother Evans Lily.

 

There he’d gone on for three hours about all the fun shenanigans he, Potter James, Lupin Remus, and some bastard named Pettigrew Peter, had all partaken in during their golden academy days as the self-proclaimed marauders of Hog Warts.

 

Uzumaki, who at first had been delighted and avidly taking notes to gather inspiration for her own craft, had eventually lost interest herself and summed it up best, “Is it just me, or are all of his pranks about giving shit to some guy named Snape Severus?”

 

All their pranks did seem to have the common themes of either a) helping Potter James seduce the then willfully stubborn Evans Lily or b) giving shit to some slimy bastard named Snape Severus.

 

Later, after having waxed more nostalgia about Hog Warts than even Ren had managed to in the years since he’d been pulled from Lee’s brain, he’d finally gotten to some sort of a point. In his later years he’d been disowned by his clan for refusing to renounce his civilian born peers, Lee’s honorable father had then taken him in, and soon after that slimy snake Snape Severus had gone and joined the Death Eaters after all (which if Lee was remembering right was the name of Ren’s old missing nin gang) and the English civil war that Ren often ranted about had started up in earnest.

 

Marauders and friends had all joined up on the side of the village against the death eating missing nins at Ren’s disposal. Unfortunately, it turned out Pettigrew Peter was a rat bastard and had delivered Potter James and Evans Lily to Ren on a silver platter along with baby Lee. Or, well, according to Black Sirius, their first-born son Potter Harry. Potter Harry, as Eru Lee had done, then miraculously survived the assassination attempt (with Evans Lily’s love being hailed responsible) and Black Sirius was throne into prison for twelve years for being wrongfully accused in the traitor Pettigrew’s place.

 

Long story short, he’d escaped prison, been more or less under house arrest for the past two years, and was the loving godfather of his delightful godson Potter Harry who attended Hog Warts with his own group of friends while he battled the missing nin Voldemort on what seemed like an annual basis.

 

And if Lee sounded eerily like some female, alternate dimension, version of Potter Harry then she had had no plans to mention it.

 

At least, not until the nidaime started bringing it up.

 

“Well, maybe I don’t want a godfather,” Lee said, hands flailing, “Maybe I was perfectly fine without any English supervision and had more than enough with my civilian relatives.”

 

“If only it could be about what you want,” Tobirama said, keeping an even pace at the streetlights flickered on one by one overhead, “But alas, I already have one English nin in my house, and given what Black Sirius said I think it’s best they remain ignorant of each other’s existence.”

 

Given that both had their chakra sealed from them, and neither seemed remotely trained in taijutsu, Lee personally would rather see that catfight take place then have one of them in her apartment.

 

“That doesn’t mean he has to be in my apartment—” Lee started but the nidaime just spared her a look.

 

“And, given that you’re the only other pair that fluently speak English and don’t live in the Senju compound, and that he has personal history with your male doppelganger and should be inclined to look upon you favorably, I’d say your apartment is the only place to stick him.”

 

Well, they could probably stick him into the depths of ANBU or something, but Lee somehow had the feeling that the nidaime wouldn’t like that answer. That was the trouble, the nidaime had made up his mind and if experience taught Lee anything then he wasn’t about to change it.

 

Lee stopped in her tracks, watched as the nidaime continued to walk away from her, all too likely smirking in victory.

 

“I should never have brought you back from the dead!” Lee shouted at his back, but he didn’t answer, just gave her a small, casual, wave of acknowledgement without any sympathy whatsoever.

 

Minato finally came to stand next to Lee, glanced over at her, “Perhaps, Lee, it won’t be so bad.”

 

“Oh, Minato,” Lee said, “I have this terrible feeling that it’s going to be the worst.”

 

* * *

 

“So… You’re Harry?” Sirius said slowly, perhaps a bit too slowly given that the little red-headed girl was giving him that trademarked Lily Evans hell-flower look telling him how little she suffered fools, “I mean, Harry, but a girl instead.”

 

It’d taken them a few days, apparently, to vet Sirius and get him out of their holding cell or wherever they’d put him. After Azkaban he wasn’t sure if he’d call it a real prison, sure, they’d taken his wand and blocked off his magic somehow, but it still wasn’t Azkaban.

 

They’d given him the wand back but kept the seals slapped on, remarking that they’d come off after some indeterminate amount of time that could be a day or until Sirius finally croaked. Sirius though, supposed he’d learned to take what he could get. Even if that made him feel… His wand felt so empty, like just an ordinary stick of wood, and he’d wondered in horror if this was what muggles felt like.

 

Still, he was alive, he could walk outside, had an entire hidden village (whatever the hell that even was) to walk through without any fear of having his soul sucked out by dementors. Ironically, he was freer here, arrested and imprisoned for falling through the veil of death with his magic sealed off, than he’d been in almost fifteen years.

 

He didn’t know how he felt about that, really. A part of him wanted to be disappointed, because from the little he’d seen… Well, he didn’t know, he just had hoped England would be better than this place.

 

Either way, on exiting the cell and being brought blinking into the sun he’d been chauffeured by his interrogator and new buddy, the stoic no-nonsense second hokage Tobirama Senju (not that Sirius really knew what a ‘hokage’ was supposed to be), to the shared apartment of some kid named Minato Namikaze and Eru Lee, otherwise known as Ellie Potter.

 

When she’d opened the door, it had almost been like being thrown back in time. She looked like Lily down to almost a tee, it was her eyes, her face, her skin maybe a tad paler, but it really was only her thick curling hair (courtesy of James) that gave her a definitive difference from her mother.

 

And sitting at their table, sipping the tea graciously provided by her roommate, he couldn’t stop staring at her, at either of them really. She wasn’t dressed like Lily at that age, no Hogwarts uniform for one thing, but she was in more modern casual wear with a hint of something eastern inside it that Sirius couldn’t quite put his finger on. Her hair was longer too, held back away from her face in a thick braid. And she looked… sharper that Lily ever had, leaner, more in shape just like everyone in this place had looked in shape enough to be aurors or professional duelists.

 

The boy was more like the rest, blonde and blue eyed but clearly Asian, very pretty to look at and with an odd poise that made him seem older than he looked. Sirius, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, couldn’t ever remember acting as mature as this brat. In fact, he couldn’t remember anyone at that age acting as mature as this Minato or girl-Harry, Ellie, Lee.

 

The girl sighed, swirled her tea in her cup, “I suppose so.”

 

“I mean, your parents were James and Lily, and you were born on July 31st, 1980?” Sirius asked and she just glumly nodded, apparently not wanting this confirmed.

 

Which… Normally Sirius wouldn’t believe this sort of thing at all but, the thing was, it was too alien for them to get something out of him by making this up. More, what the hell would they get out of him? His cooperation? They didn’t need that they’d laced him with seals. His loyalty? That wasn’t happening any time fast and they knew it, didn’t seem to want it anyway.

 

Plus, it was just too far out there, another dimension with an alternate version of James and Lily’s kid, his godson, not in England with his pig relatives? Why even bother?

 

And if they were going to bother, he thought, they would have made her look more like Harry. The similarities were kind of there, if you squinted, but only if you had gotten the whole family together would the sibling resemblance shine through. Really, Harry and this girl just shared their mother’s eyes and that was about the end of everything obvious.

 

“And you live here in…”

 

“ _Konohagakure_ ,” the boy answered for her, “The Village Hidden in the Leaves.”

 

“Right,” Sirius said, “Except, shouldn’t you be in England?”

 

Her eyes flashed, and Sirius felt something crawl up his spine, a kind of dread that he’d rarely felt before, and never before graduating Hogwarts. For a moment, he looked at her, this carbon copy of Lily Evans, and felt truly afraid. Then it was gone and he was breathing a sigh of relief for having avoided… something.

 

“I had no business in England,” the girl, Ellie had to remember it was Ellie and not Harry, unless it was Lee, “I immigrated to _Konoha_ when I was four.”

 

“Business?” he asked, laughing slightly, ignoring the warning look he was getting from the boy, “You’re what, fourteen? It’s not about having business or not. And you can’t immigrate at four, nobody immigrates at four.”  


“Yes, well, I’m not nobody,” she said with a shrug, lacing her fingers together and glancing towards the boy to give him a rather tired and exasperated look. Like she really couldn’t believe she had to sit here and talk with Sirius.

 

“Hey now, come on I…” he then almost bit his tongue as he realized just why she was so prickly about all of this and about him, “Oh, they left you with Lily’s relatives too, didn’t they?”

 

Harry had been left with Petunia and her whale of a muggle husband Vernon Dursley. Lily and Petunia had had a falling out long before she graduated Hogwarts, and Sirius knew that she’d been put at the bottom of the will for that reason. But he supposed when the godfather was imprisoned wrongfully for murder, the godmother was cursed into insanity, the wizarding relatives were all dead, and every Death Eater was after your head…

 

Dumbledore, for better or worse (and Sirius often thought worse), had stuck Harry with the Dursleys where he’d remained miserable ever since.

 

Harry was a good kid, a really good kid, way better than Sirius ever had been and maybe James too. If it had been Sirius in Harry’s place, Merlin, he might have held it against him for all those years he’d been left there and then all the years he’d still been stuck there even after Sirius had broken out and promised to come get him.

 

Ellie didn’t look nearly so forgiving.

 

“Your Harry never left, did he?” the girl mused, and it really was musing, like it was some decision that Harry had decided to make to stay with his bastard of an uncle.

 

“Hey now, Harry didn’t have much of a choice,” Sirius started but the girl seemed unimpressed by her counterpart’s actions.

 

“Of course he did, I had a choice,” she said, like she really meant it, like she’d managed to get to wherever the hell this even was at the age of four and so goddammit Harry could too if he just wasn’t lazy and content.

 

“He didn’t have a choice!” Sirius shouted, “You didn’t have a choice! I don’t know how you got here but—”

 

The boy, in a calm and slightly accented voice, interrupted, “I think, that since Potter Harry isn’t here to speak for himself, that maybe we should move on.”

 

It was probably a good idea, the best idea, except he couldn’t help but blurt, “But don’t you ever wonder about Hogwarts? You would have gone there, should have gone there years ago…”

 

And if Ellie’s world was anything like Sirius’ then Dumbledore, the order, all of Britain and even the Death Eaters were panicking like mad and turning over every loose rock to look for her. Even her Sirius, probably still in prison, would sometimes dream about little missing Eleanor Lily Potter.

 

“The English academy?” the girl balked, eyebrows raising and giving him this increadulous look like she couldn’t believe what he was saying, “Dear god, why?”

 

“Because it’s the greatest and there’s nothing in the world like it,” Sirius said with a grin, “God, I can tell you all about your dad’s… Or well, your alternate universe dad’s, adventures with me and the—”

 

The boy cut him off again, “I’m afraid, Mr. Black, that Lee and I already graduated from _Konoha’s_ academy some time ago.”

 

“Oh,” Sirius said, before pausing, blinking, looking at them again, “Graduated? But you kids are only what, fourteen?”

 

“And?” Ellie, Lee the boy had called her, asked as if she couldn’t see why Sirius would even bother to point that out.

 

Sirius just laughed, now somewhat awkwardly and a touch nervously, “Well, just that you don’t graduate from Hogwarts until your seventeen or eighteen. You don’t even start until you’re eleven and—”

 

“In _Konoha_ ,” Minato explained, “We start at six and graduate formal education at usually ten, eleven, or twelve. Then you go on to train with a _jonin sensei_ and later under a _jonin_ as an apprentice. Both Lee and I are _chunin_ apprentices at the moment, and we’ll probably be taking our _jonin_ exams next year.”  

 

That was… a lot of non-English words. Except, if Sirius was getting that right, then basically Minato and Lee were both going to be taking what might be their NEWT equivalent tests by the time they were fifteen, if not their mastery level tests that only formal apprentices took.

 

Sirius had nothing to say, just nodded slowly, uncertainly, and said lamely, “Right.”

 

Sirius didn’t know it, but it’d only get worse from there.

 

* * *

 

Now, Sirius wasn’t going to say it took him an embarrassingly long time to put it together, but it took him an embarrassingly long time to put it together.

 

At first the early school ages, the lack of wands, and the eerily adult acting kids was just a sort of culture shock thing. Sirius’ own personal east meets west, sure it was weird, but the kids still did act like kids most of the time and he guessed that this was just a place that somehow never jumped on the wand bandwagon.

 

Then he’d started getting a little edgy when he picked up what all the spells, all their jutsus, seemed to be for. You didn’t see all the little spells or bits of magic to get you through the day, no chocolate frogs, no quick quills, no repairo, for the most part these people barely used magic at all. Except, each and every one of them had the kinds of wards on their houses that you saw on the oldest Gringotts vaults.

 

And the only ones whoever did use magic, who did ward their homes and use it to jump from roof to roof or else turn into a pile of leaves or something, were the people called shinobi. Everyone else, literally every other person inside the village doing any other kind of job, was apparently a muggle.

 

Muggles all fully aware of their magic wielding brethren, providing goods and services and what not, without even blinking an eye.

 

That had been his first alarm bell, although Sirius had gotten paranoid for the entirely wrong reasons.

 

He’d sent a letter off to Tobirama Senju, having to embarrassingly ask for Lee and Minato’s help in how to use their muggle-like post, and met with the man in Lee’s apartment, eyes drifting to every window and the door and back again, “Why do the muggles all know about you guys?”

 

“The muggles?” Tobirama had asked, almost amused by the question.

 

“You can’t—" Sirius cut himself off, biting his tongue, before starting again, “Look, I pride myself on being really open-minded. I got myself burned off the family tapestry for how bloody open-minded I was. But the last time the muggles knew about us, really knew about us, they spent centuries perfecting ways to light us on fire! The statute of secrecy exists for a reason and—”

 

“A hidden village thrives on the support of its civilian population,” Tobirama said with an air of practiced wisdom, “Similarly, the civilian population survives and thrives with the protection and services of the hidden village. It would not be in their best interest, no matter how they may loathe us or what grievances they hold against us, to seek our destruction. Similarly, it would not be in the hidden village’s interest to rid ourselves of the civilian population.”

 

Civilian, Sirius hadn’t really caught it then, had dully noticed that every time he said muggle they said civilian but hadn’t thought much of it. He’d been distracted by trying and failing to get to know little Lee (who turned out to have no sense of humor whatsoever), finding a way back home to Harry, and just wondering what Harry was doing and what was happening in his own world.

 

Eventually though, even he wasn’t thick enough not to realize it. They were child soldiers. Each and every wizard and witch here, as soon as they showed any magical ability, entered the academy to become a child soldier and would remain a part of Konoha’s militia until their retirement or death.

 

Lee, the little could have been of Harry Potter, was a particularly promising and powerful member of this army of children who routinely battled against armies of other children, and had been trained to be this since the age of six years old.

 

And all he could think was that but for the grace of God that could have been Harry.

 

Harry could have… left, immigrated, whatever it was the Durlseys and wound up here and Merlin that could have been him. It could have been him talking about knives, dark lethal spells, and how best to kill one’s enemy at the breakfast table and he wouldn’t have even noticed the difference. No, he would have thought it was for the best, because at least it wasn’t the Dursleys.

 

Lee could die on the battlefield, likely would die on the battlefield of some foreign country Sirius had never heard of, but at least it wasn’t bloody Number 4 Privet Drive.

 

It was the kid, Minato, who after months of wandering the countryside with his master (another mercenary for hire in the disguise of a bloke Sirius probably would have liked otherwise) had returned to the apartment who found him.

 

“So, you finally figured it out.”

 

Sirius glanced up at him, over the bottle of sake he’d taken the liberty of purchasing on Lee and Minato’s tab (purchased by their blood money), “And you’re one of them too.”

 

This kid looked too pretty, too charming, for that sort of thing. More, Sirius had talked to Minato often enough and had had the kid pegged for a Gryffindor or maybe a Ravenclaw or Puff. Here though, you didn’t have to be in Slytherin to be a murderer, you could belong to any house at all and have blood on your hands.

 

And yet Sirius still liked him, for all that the kid was too serious, too adult, Sirius still liked him…

 

Minato slid into the seat across from him, took his measure, and then poured himself a shot of sake as well.

 

“You’re too young for this shit,” Sirius said, speaking about the alcohol but also meaning the brat’s line of work, if you could call it that.

 

“I think, likely, we have to grow up faster than what you’re used to,” Minato said, tipping his head back and throwing the sake down his throat. Sirius was mildly impressed, that stuff had burned down his throat the first few drinks in, now of course he was too drunk to feel it.

 

“Have you killed anyone?” Sirius asked, the alcohol making him bolder and reckless than he’d been in a long time.

 

Minato glanced at him, those pale blue eyes burning, and then he nodded shortly, “Yes, bandits a few times, missing nin a few others…”

 

“Has Lee?”

 

“Are you sure you want to know?” Minato asked, clearly knowing that Sirius didn’t really.

 

Still, Sirius was never one for hiding from unpleasant truths and hissed, “Yes.”

 

“Lee’s track record is more extensive than mine and at a younger age,” he said before pausing, looking almost fond as well as a little worn, “Lee is… very gifted.”

 

“Gifted? You call how good you are at killing people gifted?”

 

“Yes,” and he said it without any shame whatsoever, without even an ounce of hesitation, “It’s a part of our line of work, in part what we’re trained to do from the very beginning. We are measured based on how good we are at killing people.”

 

“That’s bullshit,” Sirius spat, “In England, we’d call you bastards, each and every one of you, even Lee, dark wizards and witches for that.”

 

And that was the real truth of it, that Sirius was in a bloody hive of dark magic and he hadn’t even known it. Hadn’t been able to tell because good, bad, they all mixed together here and the people he liked had murdered countless others in times of war and peace. They were all resigned to it, that was the word, unbothered because they just accepted that this was the way it had to be and that they all had to be these shinobi…

 

Minato seemed to consider that, poured himself another drink, then asked, “Were you a dark wizard for defending your home country?”

 

“What?” Sirius asked, losing track of the conversation and the point in his drunken blur.

 

“Were you a dark wizard for capturing, maiming, and even killing your Death Eaters?” Minato repeated, leaning forward and looking Sirius directly in the eye in that unnerving manner that Sirius suspected he’d picked up from Lee.

 

“Of course not!”

 

“It’s not so different here,” Minato said, a small triumphant smile stretching across his lips. Sirius opened his mouth, closed it, trying to think of a way to point out that it had been different. They’d been at war, true a war that no one had acknowledged or wanted to acknowledge but…

 

He took another drink.

 

“She won’t go with you,” Minato said softly, now looking away and past Sirius.

 

“What’s that?” Sirius asked, now really lost.

 

“You’re going to ask her to leave with you, go back to England, your England, whenever and however you manage to find a way back,” Minato summarized, saying the words that Sirius hadn’t even realized he would think except…

 

Good god, he would, he’d sober up and in his head would be this great idea to save Ellie, Harry, Lee from this nightmare she didn’t know she was trapped in. To give her back England, Hogwarts, all those things she’d stolen from herself to escape the Dursleys.

 

He’d show her that she didn’t have to be… this.

 

Except Minato just kept quietly talking, “She’ll say no.”

 

And for once, instead of horrified or charmed, Sirius was baleful as he looked down at this brat and asked, “How do you know?”

 

Minato, however, was utterly unmoved, “I know Lee better than anyone in the world, especially you, and no matter what happens in the village, no matter what wars land on our doorstep, no matter how many people die, she will never go back. Not for you, not for Hog Warts, not even for herself.”

 

He said it with such… confidence, Sirius thought, an alarming confidence in a boy as young as him. The cool, assured, tempered confidence that came with experience and wisdom rather than pure ego. The kind of confidence that Sirius didn’t know if he’d ever had in his life.

 

Still, he stood, goal now in mind and threw down his cup, “Well, we’ll see about that, Namikaze!”

 

And it didn’t matter that that day, whenever it was, was probably years off if it would happen at all. It didn’t matter that Namikaze and his ilk had ten years on Sirius. It didn’t matter that Konoha had been there when Sirius, any Sirius, had not. He’d find a way, he’d show her, get them home and do for her what he couldn’t do for Harry…

 

As soon as he wasn’t plastered, he thought to himself as he staggered off to bed with Minato grinning behind him, he’d do it.

**Author's Note:**

> Lee as always, has some major unresolved childhood issues, but the likelihood that Sirius can resolve these and convince her to abandon her village is highly doubtful. 
> 
> Written for the 2200th review of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" on fanfiction by Dotika who asked for a fic where someone from England comes to inspect the girl who lived's living conditions and education. 
> 
> Now, as I can see no way in hell even in a side fic for Dumbledore or anyone else to convince Lee to teleport them to Konoha we have alternate dimension/canon Sirius falling conveniently through a time portal and being horrified.
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


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